The ideal of mathematical exactness is strongly paradigmatic for modern science, for which Mathematics practically functions as a metaphysical foundation. This strongly influenced Philosophy. In our century, however, critical voices arise, even from the ranks of scientists. Reflection on the foundations of Mathematics has produced a deeper insight into its nature. The tendency to judge content by structure becomes less predominant. Metaphysics is no longer rejected as only producing constructions with unjustified claims to necessity. This book combines contemporary Philosophy of (...) Mathematics with classical philosophical themes. It replaces the anti-metaphysical tendencies of modern and postmodern Philosophy by an unrestricted horizon of epistemic perspectives. (shrink)

Mathematics and the Mind of God is the synopsis of a leture held at a symposium under this title at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1995. It takes a critical position with respect to the suggestion that there is a shortcut from the exact sciences to theology. It is true that mathematics is the pure form in which the exactness of these sciences can be expressed. The fundamental principle of it, however, the structurability of our world of experience, is (...) not expressible in mathematical form. It belongs to the subject matter of metaphysics, in the sense of rational relation of principles. Mystical experience and theological reflection are even beyond the realm of metaphysics, because they claim to transcend natural human reason. Jumping directly from science to theology therefore gives rise to many misunderstandings which are detrimental to both. (shrink)

This collection presents the English-language reader for the first time with essays that are representative of Bernstein's much-neglected revisionist period, 1901-1921. Bernstein himself suggested that this later work included significant new elements, indicating further progress in his liberal-socialist theory. Bernstein's later work acquires additional significance in light of the events of 1989, which have discredited not only Marxism-Leninism, but revolutionary Marxist theory in general, thus making the reevaluation of Bernstein's revisionism a worthwhile experience.

Within an environmental virtue ethic belongs moderation for the sake of ecojustice. Named attunement, this virtue both resembles and differs from Aristotelian and Thomistic articulations of temperance. Principally expressed as frugality and moderation in diet, it includes: sensitivity to limits, acceptance of limits, joyous contentment, creativity, and readiness to sacrifice.

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics - the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated papers resulting from the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control convened in June 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Society of Law, Medicine, Ethics. Each of the papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness: laws and legal authorities for public health practitioners; legal competencies public health practitioners and legal and policy decision makers need (...) for use of these laws and authorities; crossdisciplinary and cross-jurisdiction coordination of law-based public health actions; and information on public health law best practices. Collectively, they are referenced as the “white papers.”Our purpose is to offer action options that will help to improve the legal competencies of public health practitioners and policy decision makers with respect to drafting, interpreting. (shrink)

"Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking." --Gordon Epperson, _Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism_.

Two major developments of the last two decades have radically undermined traditional justifications of leftist politics: the failure of 20th-century `socialist' experiments, and what might be termed the deessentializing movement in contemporary philosophy. However, the social injustices that animated revolutionary thinkers in many respects remain, and some have arguably worsened in the era of globalized capitalism. This article investigates whether it is possible to articulate a new theoretical underpinning for progressive politics that nevertheless avoids the essentialist moves of Marxism. Ethico-political (...) readings of Derrida — one of the most influential anti-essentialist thinkers — are compared to Ernesto Laclau's attempts at formulating a post-Marxist progressive politics built around the notions of `hegemony' and `radical democracy'. Laclau's intervention in the Marxist tradition is to deconstruct its traditional categories so as to take account of contingency; his intervention in deconstruction is to introduce what in this article is described as `contestation', so as to provide a more coherent account of the political. The article concludes that neither deconstruction nor radical democracy provides an adequate basis for poltical action, but that the latter's account of the political is a meaningful development of the theoretical schema articulated by the former and does point to the possibility of a non-essentialist progressive politics. Key Words: aporia • contestation • contingency • deconstruction • Jacques Derrida • hegemony • justice • Ernesto Laclau • Emmanuel Levinas • responsibility. (shrink)

(2005). On Bringing Consciousness into the House of Science – with the Help of Husserlian Phenomenology. Angelaki: Vol. 10, continental philosophy and the sciences the german traditionissue editor: damian veal, pp. 145-162.

There is widespread agreement among philosophers that we refer to, think or talk about non-existent objects in much the same way as we refer to, think or talk about other objects. This paper explores the case of objects of fiction in the perspective of Husserlian philosophical phenomenology. In this perspective, everything objective is dealt with as object of some consciousness and as presenting itself in subjective modes. Within the scope of this paper, the focus of the descriptive analysis will be (...) on showing in some detail how conscious experiences of intentionally referring to something fictive in pre-linguistic intuitive acts of imagining something are to be articulated with regard to the object of consciousness, i.e. noematically, and with regard to the intentional act, i.e. noetically. Special attention will be given to the reflective finding of some consciousness being intentionally implied and thereby modified in the very performance of an intentional act of representifying (vergegenwärtigen) something in fiction and to the question of identity and individuation of objects in fiction. It will be argued that modifications occurring in representificational consciousness, which Husserl called ‘as-if’ or ‘quasi’ modifications, provide the key for understanding the phenomenology of fictional intentionality and reference. (shrink)

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics — the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

"Allerdings, das ist eine grosse Frage, der ich zu sehr ausgewichen bin, die Evidenz des Ich als ein Identisches, das also doch nicht in dem Bündel bestehen kann." (Husserl, 1907) Bekanntlich verwirft Husserl in den Logischen Untersuchungen die Auffassung, "dass die Beziehung auf das Ich etwas zum we sentlichen Bestande des intentionalen Erlebnisses selbst Gehöriges sei'',! und bildet um 1907, nach Einführung der phänomenolo gischen Reduktion, "die Beziehung auf das Ich zu unterlassen, oder von ihr zu abstrahieren" geradezu die Bedingung, (...) ein "reines Phänomen im Sinne der Phänomenologie" 2 zu gewinnen. Und bekanntlich heisst es demgegenüber in den Ideen von 1913: "Unter den allgemeinen Wesenseigentümlichkeiten des tran szendental gereinigten Erlebnisgebietes gebührt eigentlich die erste Stelle der Beziehung auf das,reine' Ich",3 und revidiert Husserl in der zweiten Auflage der Logischen Untersuchungen von 4 1913 seine Stellungnahme zur Frage des reinen Ich. Weniger bekannt ist bisher, wie Husserl auf seinem Denkweg von der einen zur anderen Stellungnahme zum Problem des Ich gekommen ist. Was bewegte ihn, das "Ich" in die phänomeno logische Problematik einzubeziehen? Zu vermuten war, dem Wandel in der Stellung zum Problem des Ich liege ein Wandel im Verständnis der Phänomenologie selbst zugrunde. Welche Phänomene motivierten, auf dem phänomenologischen Boden selbst, die Einbeziehung des Ich? Vor allem dieser Frage gehen wir, unter Berücksichtigung des Nachlassmaterials des Husserl Archivs (Leuven), in unserer Studie nach. (shrink)

Philosophy after Hiroshima offers a philosophical analysis of the issues surrounding war and peace, and their challenges to ethics. It reminds us that the threat posed to civilization by nuclear weapons persists, as does the need for continuing philosophical reflection on the nature of war, the problem of violence, and the need for a workable ethics in the nuclear age. The book recalls the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the beginning of the nuclear age, the Cold War, and (...) subsequently of the hegemonic unilateralism of the sole superpower. Reviewing early critical responses to the first atomic bombings by such figures as Camus, Sartre, Russell, Heidegger, Jaspers and others, the authors themselves respond to contemporary threats to peace, including the US "global war on terrorism," the recrudescence of militarism, and the continuation of imperial power politics by other means. In the nuclear age, the use of military force as a political instrument threatens the future of humanity. This poses formidable challenges to philosophy and calls for its transformation. In using memories of the atomic bombings to help us to grasp the moral implications of the current escalation of global violence, the authors hope to show the urgent relevance of nonviolence in the contemporary context. Drawing on a range of philosophical traditions Taoist and Western the contributors take up a welter of philosophical and political concerns of topical interest, including human rights, toleration, the politics of memory, intercultural dialogue, the ethics of co-responsibility, and the possibility of a cosmopolitan order of law and peace. Going beyond postmodernism and deconstruction, several of the authors develop a post-critical, constructive paradigm of thinking a philosophy of the possible and a new methodology for the realization of the creative potential of the humanities. Philosophy is viewed as a peace-promoting global dialogue. (shrink)

Marx, like many of his contemporaries, uncritically assumed that humanity develops from primitive beginnings to ever more perfect stages. In his theory of human development he measured progress by two main standards: the decrease of all forms of dependence, and the increase of universality in man's relations to nature and to his fellow man. In our century, not only have new structures of power and dependence emerged, but successive movements have also been generated to restore the more ordered and limited (...) relationships of the past. If belief in progress is nowadays no longer self-evident, such a state of affairs can help us reflect on the conditions necessary to realize the values which determined Marx's categorical imperative, or his insistence that we overthrow all relations by which man is made a debased and enslaved being. One of these conditions is the voluntary limitation of our needs: the need to use material goods without regard for others, the need to build up or maintain security even at the cost of violence, and the need to restrict the circle of those with whom we identify to our own particular culture, race, class or ways of thinking and acting. (shrink)

H. Richard Niebuhr's typology of the relation between Christ and culture can function as a heuristic device to identify different approaches to Christian business ethics. Five types are outlined: Christ Against Business, The Christ of Business, Christ Above Business, Christ and Business in Paradox, and Christ the Transformer of Business. This typology may facilitate discussion on the relative adequacy of various theological assumptions about ethical change in business.

This paper argues for the combination of political and socio-economic analysis in the study of early medieval gift-giving, specifically in the context of the late Merovingian Church. Gift-giving in this period is often viewed through a historiographical tradition strongly influenced by anthropological scholarship, which rarely considers any socio-economic reasoning behind the act – particularly in the case of ecclesiastical institutions and actors. This paper associates itself with the recent and growing answer to this position, and particularly to Ian Wood’s re-working (...) of Appadurai and Appadurai Breckenridge’s “Temple Societies” theory. It studies the political, social, and economic context and repercussions of gift-giving in the Life of Saint Eligius, a seventh-century craftsman, member of the Merovingian court, and subsequently bishop of the see of Noyon, in North-Eastern Francia. The paper analyses the vita in a threefold way: Firstly, it looks at the connection between political patronage and gift-giving through the saint’s relationship to the Merovingian court. Secondly, it considers the potential socio-economic effects of gift-giving on the ecclesiastical institutions described throughout the text, and on the societies around them. Thirdly, it interprets these aspects in the light of the political expansion of the Merovingian Church, and of its institutions, in eastern Gaul. (shrink)

The book makes a direct contribution to the connection between phenomenology and cognitive science.

A reproducibility principle is formulated and adopted as the guiding criterion for the acceptance of an experimental procedure as a simultaneous measurement of several observables. It is pointed out that this criterion can be applied to classical as well as quantum physics, and that it incorporates compatible as well as incompatible observables. The concept of fuzzy probability measure is presented as a possible mathematical tool for the description of statistical processes involving measurements of incompatible observables.

A notion of quantum space-time is introduced, physically defined as the totality of all flows of quantum test particles in free fall. In quantum space-time the classical notion of deterministic inertial frames is replaced by that of stochastic frames marked by extended particles. The same particles are used both as markers of quantum space-time points as well as natural clocks, each species of quantum test particle thus providing a standard for space-time measurements. In the considered flat-space case, the fluctuations in (...) coordinate values with respect to stochastic frames are described by coordinate probability amplitudes related to irreducible stochastic phase space representations of the Poincaré group. Lagrangian field theory on quantum space-time is formulated. The ensuing equations of motion for interacting fields contain no singularities in their nonlinear terms, and therefore can be handled by methods borrowed from classical nonlinear analysis. (shrink)

It is shown that the time operatorQ 0 appearing in the realization of the RCCR's [Qμ,Pv]=−jhgμv, on Minkowski quantum spacetime is a self adjoint operator on Hilbert space of square integrable functions over Σ m =σ×v m , where σ is a timelike hyperplane. This result leads to time-energy uncertainty relations that match their space-momentum counterparts. The operators Qμ appearing in Born's metric operator in quantum spacetime emerge as internal spacetime operators for exciton states, and the condition that the metric (...) operator should possess a ground exciton state assumes the significance of achieving minimal spacetime4-momentum uncertainty in fundamental standards for spacetime measurements. (shrink)